


The Possession of Ryan Bergara

by EmCantEven



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-09-16 03:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16945920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmCantEven/pseuds/EmCantEven
Summary: It was just like every other haunting, right?





	1. To Begin in the Middle

    Ryan stood there upon a frozen lake, the wind singing as it passed over the frozen surface. He notices that a thick forest stretches beyond the frozen lake, the branches of the evergreens hanging low, weighed down by piles of white snow.  

    “No, no, no, no. Please, please, no, not again. Not another one,” Ryan cried to the empty surroundings. This was supposed to be done with, he had gone to Father Thomas, gotten a blessing, he was cleansed.

    Ryan ran, or at least he tried to. He would get halfway across the lake before suddenly ending up back in the center. After trying to reach the forest an uncountable number of times Ryan finally collapses onto the ice hugging his knees close to him.

    “Why, why me?” In the distance Ryan heard a noise. Lifting his head to the sky he sees nothing so he looks to the forest and the sound becomes clearer, it's the screech of an owl sitting on one of the branches of a large tree.

    “What the-” Suddenly a large black mass of feathers and cawing dived from out of the sky at Ryan causing him to scream and cover his head. Once everything had settled and the wind was back to singing Ryan uncurles only to scream as his eyes set upon the bodies of a flock of dead birds.

    “Oh God, please-” his voice turns into a high pitch whine as the bodies of the birds start to melt into an oily black ooze that seeps through the ice and into the water below.

    Ryan sits there in the middle of the frozen lake for what feels like an eternity, to afraid to move in case of another terrifying occurrence. “Just wake up, just wake up,” he mutters to himself as he pinches his arms and lightly taps his face. “Please wake up.”

    “ _Ryan,_ ” his name carried softly by the wind swept over his ears sending a wave of chills down his back.

    “Please, leave me alone! Why are you doing this to me?” Ryan pleads with the wind.

“ _Ryan,”_  the ice below him started to crack beneath his feet. Ryan, too paralyzed to run stood as still as a statue, tears gathering in his eyes.

    “Please,” Ryan’s voice sounds like a whisper next to the loud crack of the ice and the following splash as Ryan loses his footing and plunges into the freezing water below.

    Ryan desperately tries to claw his way up to the surface as water fills his panicking lungs to no avail. It is as if something has attached itself to his legs and is dragging him through the gray-blue water down to the muddy bottom of the lake. From a distance Ryan could make out a dark shape rocketing towards him through the water, as the shape drew closer Ryan knew exactly what this being was and his struggling increased tenfold.

    “ _RYAN!”_

_~~~_

    Ryan bolted awake just as the inky blob reached him. Breathing rapidly Ryan looked around his room and sighed as the only thing he noticed was the sun’s rays reaching through the window illuminating the blanket he must have thrown off himself in the night.

    Grabbing his phone from the nightstand next to his bed, Ryan punched in a number and held it up to his ear, waiting for his call to be answered.

    “ _Ryan?”_

    “It happened again.”

* * *

 

**Three Months Earlier**

    “So, Shane, what about this one: there is this ghost town-”

    “We’ve did a ghost town last season, Ryan, the viewers are going to think that we are running out of ideas,” Shane doesn’t even look up from his own computer, missing the deadpan look Ryan sends his way.

    “Not like this, this ghost town was said to have been eradicated by a demon in the early in the 1800s.” At this Shane does raise his head from his laptop.

“Sounds like a bunch of horse-shit,” Shane’s monotone reply plus the dead look that he gave Ryan has Ryan doubling over in laughter.    

    “Well now we have to do it,” Ryan manages to stutter out between his laughter. “Just to prove you wrong.”

    “I’m not wrong, it’s a load of horse-shit and I can’t wait to see what you come up with in order to try to prove me wrong,” Shane goes back to his computer and that is the end of that conversation.

    Ryan smiles and stands. “I’m heading over to research.” The only reply he receives from his co-host and friend is a hum.


	2. The Truth Behind the Tale

“There wasn’t a lot and we couldn’t actually find where Hollisberry Town was actually located because it isn’t on any modern day maps,” an intern from research tells Ryan as she hands him a folder. “How did you find out about this place?”

“A YouTube comment believe it or not, on the last season finale of True Crime,” Ryan took the folder and started to flip through it. “Why do you ask?”

“Well it's an obscure place, and definitely one of the creepier ones.” The intern shrugs. “I heard whispers about it growing up actually, the stories always kind of reminded me of the lost colony of Roanoke.”

Ryan set the folder down immediately and placed all his attention on her. “What else do you know about this place?” 

“Well it’s all in the folder but I guess telling you about it wouldn’t hurt.” The girl takes a seat at the empty station next to Ryan’s.

“Wait,” Ryan grabs something out of his bag. “Can I record this?”

“Yeah sure why not.”

“Great,” Ryan turned on the recorder and motioned for the girl to start.

“The first time I heard of Hollisberry Hill I was maybe five-years-old. It was Halloween and some of the older kids were telling ghost stories. Of these older kids, Jim, was the town’s troublemaker, in and out of juvie for things like vandalism. Well it was Jim’s turn to tell a story and he told the story of Agatha McColich and Hollisberry Hill.”

“Agatha McColich?” Ryan asks.

“Yes the town was originally settled by the Irish. There is some speculation actually that they were the last of the druids who were running away from persecution in Catholic Ireland.”

“Interesting, continue.” 

“So according to Jim the story goes that Agatha lived in Hollisberry Hill with her father, mother, and two younger brothers. Agatha was resentful of her brothers because she knew that when her father died that neither her nor her mother would receive any of the land or money that her father owned.”

“As they did back then.”

“As they did.” The intern continues.

“So one day while Agatha and her mother were in the next town over looking for fabric to make a new dress for the Mayor’s daughter, Agatha stumbles upon a church. While her mother is distracted and looking at fabrics Agatha sneaks away and into the church. She had heard about churches and their confessionals from passing merchants and thought that maybe that confessing to a priest would remove her resentment towards her brothers.”

“It didn’t work did it?”

“Will you be quiet and let me finish?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Ryan of course did not feel sorry at all and started to laugh causing the intern to smile and roll her eyes. 

“So Agatha goes to confessional and the priest says to her that she should pray to God every day. Once when the sun rises, once when the sun is at its zenith, once when the sun sets, and at every meal. And if she did that every day for a month then God would forgive her resentment and her soul would be healed from the scars that the darkness gave it. So Agatha did, five times a day she prayed to God to forgive her for letting darkness into her life and after a month she stopped resenting her brothers.”

“Okay, so happy ending?”

“Not quite. As time went on Agatha started noticing other spots of darkness throughout the town, so one day she revisited the priest in the neighboring town and told him of the darkness she had found. The priest brought in front of the altar and baptized her, at that moment she was reborn Dinah, meaning judgement as the priest then tasked her with bringing God’s judgement down upon the people of Hollisberry. She was given the task of converting the whole town to Christianity, or bathe them in hellfire to cleanse the land.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit indeed.” The intern nods her head before continuing her story.

“So she goes back to her little town in the middle of the woods no longer Agatha McColich, but as Dinah, The Judgement of God. The own doesn’t like this very much as their ancestors had left Ireland to get away from Christianity and their God, but they have known Dinah for her entire life so they let it pass and just ignore her, they even continue to call her Agatha. This of course enrages Dinah, she was sent there to save their souls and they brush her off as if she is still the little girl who chased butterflies in the woods. So one night in a fit of rage she lights the mayor’s house on fire, trapping the mayor, his wife, and their little girl inside, burning them to death.”

“What the fuck?” Ryan whispers, his eyes blown wide.

“Only realizing what she had once the smoke had cleared and the embers of the house had cooled Didah ran. She eventually had made her way to the other town where the news of the fire had already reached. When she approached the priest and explained what had actually happened he cast her from the church, stating that judgement fueled by rage, was no judgement at all. Cast from her church and knowing she could never return to Hollisberry, Didah retreated to the woods where she allowed her rage to simmer and grow. It is though that while in the woods Didah had been visited by Satan himself. Told story similar to her own, Satan convinced Didah to sign a contract with him, her soul for her revenge.”

“Never make a deal with Satan, Didah, everyone knows that.”

“Imbued with Satan’s power, Didah returned to Hollisberry late one night. Ath the site of the fire that she had set before Didah preformed a summoning ritual and set a demon loose on the town. It is said that, that night the screams were so loud and the fire so bright that the horrors of that night could be seen from the neighboring town, the priest that had first met Didah that one fateful day in the confessional was said to go mute that night, never to speak anything but a prayer again. And no-one ever really knows what happened to Didah that night.”

The intern pauses to catch her breath and stands and walks over to one of the large windows that spans across the wall. Ryan lets the pause, trying to process all that he had heard. When he motions to her to complete her story she nods.

“One of the parents, I can’t remember who’s, was passing by our little group as Jim finished up his story and freaked. She called to the other parents and we were all ushered back home, Jim;s parents looked furious as they dragged him off. That night my parents sat me down and told me that, that story Jim had told us was completely fake, but to never repeat it. That had always struck me as odd, but I never questioned it until I was fifteen. By the time I was fifteen I had almost forgotten about the story of Hollisberry Hill and Agatha and her Satanic contract, it was just an old ghost story that I had heard only once, why should I have remembered it?”

“So what made you remember it?” Ryan asks looking at the girl as she looks out one of the office windows to the street below.

“One day when I was fifteen, Jim, the boy from before, storms out of the local church screeching about how he was going to prove it, prove that L-” the intern catches herself. “That the demon was real. I watched as Jim took off into the woods. He never came back. The town police spent weeks combing the surrounding woods for him, even sent out a missing persons report out, nothing. That night I caught my parents whispering and I confronted them on the story of Agatha, they told me that I should never speak the demon’s name that I should only ever call it the demon, it, or the thing, and under no circumstances should I enter the woods in search of Hollisberry, for I would never return.”

She looks back at Ryan and smiles at the scared look that crosses his face. “But that’s just a ghost story of course, nothing's ever been proven.”

“Of course not, but it still would make for a great episode.”

“Of course. Well I should be getting back to work. Hope your episode goes well.”

With that she walked out of the main office and back up the stairs towards research. Ryan waited another minute before turning off the recorder, exhaling, and opening up the folder that had laid undisturbed on the desk. 


	3. Something Wicked This Way Comes

We film in like an hour, do you want to grab lunch before or after?” Shane said from behind Ryan making him jump.

“Dude!” Ryan cries clutching his chest. “Give a guy a little warning. You would think with all one hundred feet of you, you wouldn’t be so good at sneaking around.”

“I wouldn’t be so good at sneaking around if you ever did anything other than look at that stupid folder.”

“The folder is not stupid,” Ryan grumbles.

“You’re right. The folder isn’t stupid, what is in the folder is.” Shane chuckles as he receives a glare from Ryan. “So you up?” 

“Up? For what?”

“For lunch,” Shane shakes his head. “Come on let's go.” He reaches over and plucks the folder from Ryan’s hands. 

“Hey! Come on, I’m not even hungry.”

“I might not be able to make you sleep but I can make you sit down and eat,” Shane places the folder down as Ryan stands and grabs his phone.

"How do you know I haven’t slept? I could have slept.”

Shane glances down at Ryan’s desk littered with old coffee and tea cups. He glances back up at Ryan and raises an eyebrow.

“Leave me alone, let’s go get lunch.”

" Chipotle?” 

“Fuck yes.”

* * *

 

“So what has you so stuck on this case?” Shane asks as he and Ryan sit down at a table, their burritos in front of them. 

“Just, something about it seems off,” Ryan sighs and starts to unpack his food. “It’s like the facts that I’ve been given don’t add up.”

“Like what?”

“Well evidently, the people who settled Hollisberry Hill were Irish Celts who followed a druid and who were fleeing persecution. But then they evidently isolated themselves and never had any relation with outside villages for decades? It just sounds wrong.” Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t know, Big Guy. Something isn’t sitting with me right.

Shane gives a thoughtful hum. “How did you find out about this?”

“Believe it or not, a comment about it was left on every single True Crime episode last season. At first I thought it was just the season finale, but I checked like two nights ago and it was left on every single comment,” Ryan takes a bite of his burrito and swallows. “Now tell me that’s not weird.” 

“No you’re right, that’s a little weird.”

“Plus, that intern that I told you about? She’s gone!”

“What?”

“Like I went to her to clear something up about the story she told me and no-one in research recalls a new intern in the last five months! I even went to HR and they told me that they had no idea what I was talking about. It’s like she never existed.” The last part came out in a hissed whisper.

“Well that’s just impossible. I heard the recording you have, that’s a real life person.”

“Exactly!”

“It’s probably just some elaborate joke the others are playing on you. Just ignore it, I’m sure you’ll see her around the office soon enough.”

“Alright, maybe.” Ryan takes another bite of food. Perking up Ryan almost chokes. “I have been able to reach out to someone who might know something though!”

“That’s good, right?”

“That’s awesome! In fact she might even know where Hollisberry Hill is located!” In Ryan’s excitement he shoveled food into his mouth and started choking, making shame laugh. Taking a gulp of his soda Ryan glares at his friend. 

“By the way, we were given the green light to fly out and start filming next week! Which means we have to get the bulk of the recording done this week,” Shane points out. “So finish your food and don’t choke.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Shane laughs before pitching his voice high. “And eat your greens.”


End file.
